ARTICLES ABOUT FAMILY PORTRAIT BY DATE - PAGE 3

Surely respect for one another's privacy is sacrosanct. Yet nothing quite matches the beckoning call of the bathroom medicine cabinet, a voyeuristic motherlode that offers up clues about someone's health issues and beauty neuroses. It's the kind of nosy behavior that can send you spiraling into the land of too much information. He uses Rogaine? She's on diet pills? And what's with all those jars of Vaseline? "I've been looking in people's medicine cabinets for a long time -- probably since my 20s," admits Coke Wisdom O'Neal, a New York-based photographer, now 30, who is anything but squeamish or apologetic about his curiosity.

Marjorie Rice spread the photographs out on her Joliet kitchen counter. From their formal poses in portraits taken a century or more ago, the subjects stared gravely into the future. A plump-cheeked baby boy wearing a plaid dress with a lace collar. A woman with wavy hair spilling luxuriantly a foot past her waist. A spectacled matron in a fur-collared tweed coat. This is a season for family. But these people are not Rice's family; they are other people's. Rice, 66, a retired administrative secretary and passionate genealogist, has a remarkable hobby: She buys old photographs from antique stores and "rescues" them, tracking down their subjects' descendants and sending the pictures to their rightful homes.

Century's Son By Robert Boswell Knopf, 308 pages, $24 'It is amazing the things people throw away." So observes Morgan, a character in Robert Boswell's new novel, "Century's Son." Morgan is a garbageman, admiring a set of discarded front doors, wondering how anyone could fail to appreciate their beauty. He might have been talking about the relationships in this novel. They are in danger from disuse, from misunderstanding, from selfishness, maybe most of all from an overattentiveness to the wrong things.

Dear Ann Landers: Our 21-year-old, extremely bright daughter dropped out of college with one year to go before graduation. She took a job as a waitress and fell in love with "Ralph," a 37-year-old, divorced bartender. She started to come home in the wee hours of the morning, and I couldn't take it anymore. I told "Elyssa" she must pay rent and obey the house curfew or move out. Of course, she moved out -- right into Ralph's apartment. I am furious. Elyssa needs her degree in order to get a decent-paying job and support herself.

Dear Ann Landers: My parents have been divorced for nearly 20 years. My father remarried a nice woman 15 years ago. I thought my mother had gotten over it, but apparently, I was wrong. Mother recently had our local paper print an old photograph of her with my father, announcing their 35th wedding anniversary. She thought it was hilarious. I thought it was in terrible taste and extremely offensive to my father and his wife. When the photo appeared, Dad was approached by numerous people who wanted to know what was going on. Had they perhaps reconciled?

Ask Shirley Chambers about gun violence and all she has to do is point to the family portrait. In 1995, her 18-year-old son Carlos was shot to death by a fellow student at Jones Metropolitan High School while they walked along State Street in the South Loop. Two months ago, her 15-year-old daughter LaToya was shot in the head and killed, allegedly by a 13-year-old boy in front of a building at the Cabrini-Green housing complex. Wednesday, her 23-year-old son Jerome was gunned down a few feet from where his sister fell, only three blocks from the East Chicago District police station on Chicago Avenue.

After Ron Dayne ran for more yards than any freshman in college football history in 1996, most experts were certain he'd turn pro early. As a sophomore, Dayne even hinted that he might challenge an NFL rule forcing him to wait until his junior year to be draft-eligible. "Since my sophomore year, people said, `He's leaving early,' " Dayne said from Madison. "Now I'm a senior. I have to leave." But before he goes, we'd like to present the burly Badger tailback a lovely parting gift: the 1999 Tribune Silver Football as the Big Ten's Most Valuable Player.

Many of the stories sounded like the evening news. Raids on villages by Khmer Rouge soldiers. Hiding in a bomb shelter in Jordan. Fleeing a big house in Mogadishu after rebels from the countryside started looting homes. "Some people killed my grandpa," reported Younan Younan, a pupil born in Iraq. "It was because of our religion. We are Christians. I was in 3rd grade when we had to leave." "I think I was born in Bosnia. I only remember shooting. I cannot remember well because I was so little," added solemn-eyed Mirela Kozarcanin, now 12. Yet what was surprising, at a crowded open house Monday in Albany Park, was the search for connections, rather than differences, among people who had seen firsthand the worst that the modern world has to offer, in violence, hatred and dislocation.

With a calming smile meant to reassure an entire community, David Lemak walked past three small caskets to the pulpit of a church Thursday and in a steady voice that broke just once, eulogized his children. Borne on gurneys, the three white and gold caskets were arranged in order of age, like children lined up in a family portrait. Reading from 10 handwritten pages, Lemak first remembered his eldest son, 7-year-old Nicholas, a boy always swept up in learning. "The intensity of his focus was sometimes intensely exasperating," Lemak said, smiling again.

Dear Abby: My husband was married once before. We lived together for a few years and were married a year ago. His 20-year-old son (I'll call him "Sonny") recently bought a new home. In the foyer, Sonny hung a family picture that was taken years ago. It includes his mother, father (my husband), him and his sister. When I first saw it, my feelings were very hurt. I told my husband I thought it was inappropriate, since the marriage is history and he is now married to me. I wouldn't have a problem with the picture being kept in a photo album -- but in the main entrance to Sonny's house?